It is pointless, not to say disingenuous, to take something like the Eucharist and "define" or "explain" it in terms that are themselves now meaningless to our minds today. Just let the scripture/tradition speak for itself.
Have a good weekend everyone, I am going out of (my) town for the weekend.

"Try talking of substance and accident to a twenty five year old non Catholic."
Perhaps, but doesn't theology, as a branch of knowledge, naturally have its own terms and even its own language (that someone who wishes to study will have to inevitably learn)?
Maybe theology has multiple languages (if you're a Thomist you may prefer to speak in one language, if you're an theologian steeped in the Eastern tradition you may speak another).
Since you mentioned the terms used to define transubstantiation, I'm inclined to think that a common belief in the Real Presence transcends such language differences, and also that those languages, or different ways of approaching those truths, are perfectly appropriate in their own right. Maybe someone like Jimmy or pha could correct me if I'm wrong here.

Patrick-
I'm afraid second-hand (sorry, third-hand) quotes don't hold alot of sway with me.
I tend to look at things like encyclicals, scripture and stuff, where you will find plenty of Aristotelian language.

You haven't answered any of my points, Patrick.

A practical example might help. An educated Catholic, familiar with the issues surrounding the prohibition of "artificial" birth control and the position taken by the members of the Papal Commission assigned to examine the issue might properly decide in good faith, in his/her own mind, to practice birth control. This is commonly advised by the clergy.

As to the primacy of each individual's judgment I can only agree with a toast by Cardinal Newman (quoted by Cardinal Jack Heenan at Vatican II)"To the Pope, but to the conscience first!"

Dear Tim,
My comment on the unity of an individual was in the context of comments seeking to divide up humans into little parts and pieces. Can the conscience believe something, is it a source of moral judgement, etc. No, an individual believes (trusts is vastly more accurate and closer to "pistis") and judges. The use of late medieval philosophical jargon merely distracts from the quest for the truth. Try talking of substance and accident to a twenty five year old non Catholic. We don't think meaningfully in Aristotelian terms any more, and they don't belong here either.

Thank you, Publius. I stand corrected.

"...Jesus, Paul and I take the Hebrew view of a human. A human is one, period."
Alrighty...
And what did this have to do with the primacy of conscience question that we were discussing?
Are you saying that if you don't accept some church doctrine that you are dispensed from obedience to that teaching, because of the primacy of your own conscience, and you and your conscience are one?
Does everyone get to pick their own doctrines, then?
Can I, for instance, accept all the teachings on sexuality, but reject the ones about the death penalty? Could I then justify burning homosexuals at the stake?
I mean, if we are all going to do "what is right in our own eyes"...
Besides, the Apostle Paul made clear that the whole problem of fallen mankind is that he IS at war with himself, and is NOT one:
"...But I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin."
Romans 7:23-25
That is the struggle, and the whole drama of redemption. Man is unified in his being only through the action of the Holy Spirit. If I am whole already, what need do I have of redemption? My whole being needs redemption, including my conscience, which is as broken and unreliable as the rest of me.
We all START with a faulty conscience.

According to paragraph 1650 of the Catechism: "(T)he Church maintains that a new cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was". It says "valid", not "sacramental".
Well, that whole section of the Catechism deals with marriage as a sacrament...
Ah, see paragraph 1640:
"Thus the marriage bond has been established by God himself in such a way that a marriage concluded and consummated between baptized persons can never be dissolved." [emphasis mine]

bill,
From This Rock magazine:
"The Pauline Privilege also does not apply when a Christian has married a non-Christian. In those cases, a natural marriage exists and can be dissolved for a just cause, but by what is called the Petrine Privilege rather than by the Pauline Privilege. The Petrine Privilege is so-named because it is reserved to the Holy See, so only Rome can grant the Petrine Privilege (which it seldom does)."

Publius, would you please source that? According to paragraph 1650 of the Catechism: "(T)he Church maintains that a new cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was". It says "valid", not "sacramental".

Since your marriage is valid, you could not "theoretically" have your marriage dissolved. According to the teaching of the Church, a valid marriage is indissoluble.
You are mistaken. What you say is only true of sacramental marriages. Since her husband is an atheist (and I would assume unbaptized) their marriage is not sacramental but rather a natural bond marriage (hence the need for a dispensation).

Mrs. Aurelius: Your husband does NOT take your vows more seriously than the Church. Since your marriage is valid, you could not "theoretically" have your marriage dissolved. According to the teaching of the Church, a valid marriage is indissoluble.

Patrick-
That was my point. I think we misunderstood each other, because that was my point.

Dear JD,
The word "nephesh" is defined in Holladay's handy "Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament" several way, as is common in a language with so few words. 1. Throat, 2. breath, 3. man, men, person, people, 6. personality, individuality, etc. Jewish thinking did consider a person as having a separate body and soul.

"We ought to be on our guard, in case our conscience has stopped troubling us, not so much because of its being clear but because of its being immersed in sin." -- St. John Climacus, _Ladder of Divine Ascent_ (CWS, p. 130, Paulist Press, 1982)
The gap between conscious refusing Christ in His Church and "missing" Him in "invincible ignorance" (which is the harbor I believe patrick wants a non-Christian's conscience to dock in) is immense. Those who either for sheer historical reasons have NOT EVER encountered the Gospel or for unfathomably intractable reasons (neurological, psychological, etc.) cannot overcome their ignorance of what the Gospel means (i.e., not only abstractly, but also for their own lives), do can reside in the "shelter” of invincible ignorance. But, by sharp contrast, those who have encountered and rejected the Gospel stand not condoned eo ipso by their conscience, but rather stand condoned by a conscience which is itself condemned in the higher, larger, normative parameters of the Gospel. Was the rich young ruler somehow "off the hook" because his conscience was "troubled" by Christ’s call? Precisely the opposite. He was modeled by Christ as a paragon of unrepentance precisely in the context of the Gospel. So it is today. V2 enunciated the hard and rare cases which Tradition has always been supple enough to admit. But, as they say, hard cases make for bad rules; the unevangelized pagan or the radically alienated Holocaust survivor whose entire perception of "Christianity" is warped are extreme cases. Those who hear, ponder, and yet reject the Gospel are more common, and also less difficult to diagnose.
It may help to imagine rejection of the Gospel as preemptive apostasy from it. Are we to assume those who for reasons of conscience apostasize from Christ in His Church are off the hook? Hardly. Perhaps, though, in extreme cases of cultural and psychological damage, there is justifiable reason for separating from (though not divorcing) Christ. The fact is, contrary to patrick’s rather facile Hebraisms, the Bible plainly recognizes myriad “faculties” within the integrated self. Romans 6-8: members. Romans 12: members in one body. Matthew 5-7: the eyes, hands (metonym for volitional power), heart, etc. Of course, most apposite for this discussion is Paul explicit mention of the conscience – and, notice, the seared conscience – working within apostasy as a distinct “part” of the self (1 Tim 4:2). Indeed, Paul makes it clear the problem for the unregenerate (sine fides et baptismo) is that their consciences are darkened by sin and plunge them into condemnation. Nevertheless, he recognizes the rare cases of righteous pagan consciences (Romans 1-2; cf. also Acts 10). Saying the Bible smears all things into one amorphous, amoebic self is unwarranted, especially when such truisms are made to serve a pietistic reifying unqualified sovereignty of conscience.

In the Jewish conception, according to the scholars, soul, or nephesh in the Hebrew, is the word for life-breath, and this can take on more than our conception of animating principle- nephesh was the interiority, reflected, for example in the Psalmist saying "to you Yahweh, I lift/give my nephesh."
I'm not sure how to simplify that into self.
"Modern thinking follows the Hebrew rather than Greek thought pattern." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

I posted this to the Curt Jester's site, but since it's completely unfunny, I thought it would be more appropriate here...
-----------------------------
As a Catholic who married an atheist (yes, I had a dispensation; yes, I know all the reasons one shouldn't; we were friends since childhood and I've never regretted our marriage for a moment), I'd like to pitch into the pot--in a serious moment--the fact that he takes our vows to be more binding than does the Catholic Church.
When you don't believe in a God, a promise is simply binding of itself, and there's no one who can provide a dissolution, or an annulment, or otherwise release you from your promise to be faithful. The promise simply carries its own force. (This is assuming one believes in an objective, intrinsic morality, which he considers to be self-evidently true.)
So while I could theoretically have my marriage dissolved under certain circumstances--as our marriage, while valid, isn't sacramental--and consider myself free to marry again, he considers himself permanently bound to his promise... because that's what it means for something to be a "promise."
Food for thought, anyway.

Tim, Jesus, Paul and I take the Hebrew view of a human. A human is one, period. The word soul in the OT means "self." The NT was written in Greek and didn't bother to make this distinction but I believe you will find most if not all members of the CBS agree that, even in the NT, soul merely means self. the other sad attempts to break up the human self into definitive parts is merely following local speech. By the way modern thinking follows the Hebrew not the Greek thought pattern.

So help me nothing

Jimmy Akin in a post Marriages Not Made in Heaven notes an atheist dating service. Well at least they won't...

Learn which Vatican II document contradicts you?
Actually, Patrick, Dignitatis Humanae contradicts your earlier claim.
DH clearly teaches that the "one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad among all men," that "all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it," that "the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth." For this reason, the Church has always taught that human consciences must be formed in accord with the Church's teaching, and that human consciences err whenever they conflict with Church teaching.
It is true that a person must always follow his conscience. But it is never true that a well-formed conscience will contradict Church teaching.
If I find my conscience in conflict with some teaching of the church, without a doubt it's my conscience that needs work.
Exactly.

Publius-
For the sake of argument, would you agree with a definition of conscience as the individual's faculty of moral reasoning?
Maybe I was painting with too broad a brush before, but we are getting into an area more technical than I am used to.
My point was that the conscience can't be set up over or above the process of moral reasoning.
In other words, it is not some magical intuitive impulse that sits in judgement on our moral choices, but is bound up with the intellect and the will.
Moral reasoning is still reasoning, in other words. We have the impression of the law of God on our hearts, but (thanks to original sin) it is an incomplete and sometimes warped impression, and we have to take steps to conform it to the truth.
If I find my conscience in conflict with some teaching of the church, without a doubt it's my conscience that needs work.

Our conscience can't "believe" anything, let alone have faith. That is the job of our intellect and will. We give the assent of faith, and then train our conscience to conform to it.
The modern tendancy is to view conscience as merely an emotional phenomenon, but that's wrong. It is a part of the intellect, the part used when we engage in moral reasoning. See the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Conscience.

"the human conscience must be conformed to the truth..." Of course, but it should only conform to what it honestly believes to be the truth. Q.E.D. Peace!"
Patrick-
Our conscience can't "believe" anything, let alone have faith. That is the job of our intellect and will. We give the assent of faith, and then train our conscience to conform to it.
The job of the conscience is to remind us of what we believe, not to form those beliefs. The conscience is not a map, though it can be a map light.
We will be held responsible at the judgement if we allow our conscience to atrophy, when we might have been able to strengthen it had we taken the trouble.
I think most people who know and reject the teaching of the church just find it too much trouble, and don't want to make the sacrifices that would be necessary to apply it to their lives.

So help me nothing

Jimmy Akin in a post Marriages Not Made in Heaven notes an atheist dating service. Well at least they won't...

Okay, let's define "truth". Let us say that God knows the entirety of the truth, because (duh) God is Truth.
The Church knows all of the revealed Truth, because God told Her all about it.
The well-formed conscience knows a pretty good chunk of what truth God taught the Church, and certainly knows all of the truth which we absolutely must know for salvation -- plus other bits which are just cool and helpful.
A poorly-formed conscience knows bits and pieces of the truth, which if not correctly aligned, will lead its possessor astray. Nevertheless, it is incumbent for a conscience's possessor to follow as much of the truth as he knows at the moment. (It is also necessary that the possessor keep trying to seek the truth and educate his conscience, as well as letting God have input.)
Does this make sense?

Tim,
"the human conscience must be conformed to the truth..." Of course, but it should only conform to what it honestly believes to be the truth. Q.E.D. Peace!

Patrick-
I'm sorry, did I slam pious rabbis somewhere in my last post?
This is not a debate about whether there is salvation outside the Catholic church (please, not again...).
What I said was:
"A conscience that is not carefully and humbly conformed to the will of God, revealed through his church, will lead a person into hell as readily as anything.".
"As readily as anything". I didn't say that a non-Christian, following his/her conscience is destined for hellfire. Such a person would, however, be bound to conform their conscience at least to what they knew of natural law. It's not enough to say, "Well, my conscience doesn't bother me about this, so for me, it's o.k.".
The clearest sign of an undeveloped conscience is that it seldom bothers you.
The point I was trying to make, and that you avoided addressing, was that the human conscience must be conformed to the truth. It can't be a substitute for the truth. When mankind fell (and we are fallen), his conscience fell with him. It is damaged, and can't repair itself.

There is a basic point all are missing here.
The moral law was established by god and given to man in the form of divine revelation.
It is implanted on the hearts of all men to know the truth.
All men have free will to accept the graces given to them by god, and God gives ALL men the graces neede to be saved.
The issue is made complex because man has free will and can reject the graces given.
This leads men into a variety of errors.
The inflection point for Jews and Protestants today is the time when Jesus came.
The Jews could not accpet Jesus as the Messiah, while Protestants later on could not accept
that Jesus left a shepard on earth to guide the flock.
There are more than 60 old testament prophecies that clearly tell a reader who the messiah is. Ifr a person rejects that, there is nothing you can do for them, except pray they open thier heart to the truth.
If all of the miracles and obvious good fruits of the Catholic church do not convince a non Catholic it is the true Church established
by God, it is for reasons of sin or bad will.
it is important to note god does not give each human the same amount of grace as he gives others.
In my own family, on one side I have two relatives who were ArchBishops in Europe,
and many ordained clergy including nuns and priests. I can only conclude there were many devout and pious relatives in my family and my
present family could now be the beneficiares of their prayers and sacrafices based on the fact my family has been so richly blessed.
My confessor says it is in part becasue those who accept the graces given to them by God are given more. And to those who reject the graces, God will not send more.
That makes sense,since society at large sees that it is wrong to keep giving people money who will not work and will waste it. In time
, the lack of grace then blinds us to all things holy and good.

I think some people here are jumping the gun in responding to Patrick's comment on conscience, perhaps because of the nature of some of his other comments on other threads. Is it relativism to suggest that it would be better for an atheist to do what he really thinks is right than to pretend to be a Catholic and thus become hypocrite based on social pressure, or some other reason than thinking Catholicism is true? Was C.S. Lewis acting rightly when he received confirmation and communion (in the Anglican church), and recited the creeds, even though he was an atheist? Or should he have followed his conscience rather than trying to avoid conflict with his father?

So, some of you think a devote pius charitable rabbi who truly believes his faith is correct is going to hell because he didn't become a Roman Catholic! What about people like St Cyprian, who excommunicated the Pope, and died a martyr. As Hillel said "now, go study!" Learn which Vatican II document contradicts you?

"In the end the ultimate moral authority for anyone is their conscience. For some their conscience says follow whatever the RC Church says and they should do just that. If it is something else then they should follow that path.".
This sounds a lot like the moral relativism Pope Benedict XVI has been warning us about. Tolerance that encourages people to stay in a place that could compromise their immortal souls is not charity at all.
I wasn't really serious when I suggested that an atheist dating service was scary. An atheist or agnostic might indeed find a compatible partner through such a service. However, for many atheism and agnosticism are transient states -- Thank God -- and the formation of relationships on that basis might diminish the chance that they would eventually come to faith. We would truly lack Christian charity if we wished no more for our atheist/agnostic brothers and sisters than that they find a partner who shares their lack of belief.
It is true charity to hope and pray that those who do not presently believe will someday receive the grace of faith, not that they will continue to be comfortable in their unbelief. Jesus didn't come to save some of us - he came to save all of us.

The best thing about our consciences is that they're like muscles. We can develop them, and allow them to grow, and then trust them to guide us when we need it. Or we can give up on "working out" our cousciences, and let them get flabby and lazy.
But I know I wouldn't trust my flabby, lazy muscles to save me in some "do-pullups or die" scenario. Nor should we trust a flabby conscience.
And we should all remember what St. Ignatius says about conscience (this is a paraphrase):
To him for whom the conscience is weak, the devil seeks to weaken it, making us accept more and more in our lives.
To him for whom the conscience is strong, the devil seeks to more it all the more particular, so that the sin of scrupulosity may creep in, and we might lose the ability to pursue virtue as we grow in self-loathing.
So. Everyone.
BE. VERY. CAREFUL. OF. THE. DEVIL.

Go Tim! No moral relativism here.

"In the end the ultimate moral authority for anyone is their conscience. For some their conscience says follow whatever the RC Church says and they should do just that. If it is something else then they should follow that path.".
No, no, no!
People often make the drastic mistake of thinking that their conscience comes to them fully grown and pure.
Not so! Without the enlightenment of divine revelation, the guidance of the church, and the action of the Holy Spirit, the human conscience is stunted at best, and warped and diseased at worst.
A conscience that is not carefully and humbly conformed to the will of God, revealed through his church, will lead a person into hell as readily as anything.
What rot.

Ken you are right. I also think a sincere atheist is closer to God then a "Christian" who deliberately hears but does not listen, and reads but refuses to understand. In the end the ultimate moral authority for anyone is their conscience. For some their conscience says follow whatever the RC Church says and they should do just that. If it is something else then they should follow that path.

Go Ken.

Where would a couple who met through an athiest dating service go on a date do you suppose?
From what I've known of athiests, usually to a movie and dinner.
Then sex after (if all went well.)

OK, I know I'm going to get slammed for this but...
What's wrong with an athiest dating service? I have more respect for a person who is concerned enough about his/her beliefs that there is NOT a God and wants to marry someone who shares that belief than for someone who could give a hoot and feels free to drag a person of faith down by marrying them and undermining their faith for the rest of their life. Stated another way, athiests who feel the need to marry another athiest are making a powerful admission: what we believe about God (or a lack thereof) is very important.
Sure, athieism isn't of its own right a basis for compatibility, but neither is being Catholic. Using a dating service is merely a starting point to find someone compatible. Using one that limits its membership to a group that you'd prefer to marry from just helps to narrow that starting point.
Finally, I'm pretty sure that the majority of Catholics who meet through a Catholic dating service are not going to a Catholic event for their first date. They'll probably go to some secular event like dinner and a movie, just like a new athiest couple would. Athiests have hobbies and interests and desires just like Catholics do and are likely to start dating someone who shares those interests. They may even go on a first date that is centered on a common interest, just like a new Catholic couple would.
Now, being a former athiest myself, it is very important to me to reach out to athiest and share with them the good news of Christ. I yearn for all athiests to know Christ. However, outside of their athiesm, the fact that athiests desire to marry one of their own does not bother me.

I mean what kind of a basis is that for compatibility -- neither of us believes in anything and we don't want to be challenged by anyone who does. Where would a couple who met through an athiest dating service go on a date do you suppose?

Scary.